


Necropolis

by below_the_starry_clusters_bright



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, F/M, Kylo has issues, Post-The Last Jedi, Rey has issues, Why Does Everyone Want To Go Back To Jakku, hints of Dark!Rey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-21
Updated: 2018-02-21
Packaged: 2019-03-22 07:51:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13759596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/below_the_starry_clusters_bright/pseuds/below_the_starry_clusters_bright
Summary: "Anger spiked through Rey. It was bad enough that Kylo was there in what was supposed to be a quiet moment of acceptance and farewell, but it was a downright insult to remember that he, over everyone else in the galaxy, understood the significance of where she was."Rey returns to Jakku to try and finally let go of her past. Kylo, appearing over the Bond for the first time since Crait, wonders if he might suggest violence.





	Necropolis

If a skeleton could be stripped down further and traded for portions, the scavengers of Jakku would find a way.

Rey had overheard that sneering slice of wisdom during one of her few trips to Niima Outpost’s only cantinas. The wise philosopher behind it – a travelling merchant whose business deals could not be anything but questionable – had meant to disparage the grimy men and women he’d surrounded himself with that day, but Rey took the words with a kind of pride. If doing the impossible meant she would survive another day, then she would find a way to do the impossible.

It was with that memory in mind that Rey looked around her old AT-AT, unsurprised at the mess. Her hammock had been torn down and taken, as had her few pots and pans. Whoever had stolen her vase must have upended it first, given the dried flowers which littered the floor. Her stash of emergency portions had been raided, although the thief had been kind enough to leave behind the tattered material Rey had used as a decorative curtain.

With a nod of acceptance, Rey moved further inside the small space. She unclipped the scarf which covered most of her face, and lifted the borrowed goggles which hid the rest. The heat was already prickling at her body. She stepped over the flight manuals scattered on the ground and ignored her faint sense of indignation that they had been left behind. They were worthless when it came to trading, of course, but they had been invaluable companions whenever the heat or sandstorms made it too dangerous to leave. She hoped that whoever had taken her homemade doll had at least given it to a child and not ripped it apart for cleaning cloth.

After another once-over, there was nothing left to distract Rey. She stopped in the center of the space and stared up at the large wall of marks. Every single one had been diligently carved at the end of another lonely day.

 _One more mark is one less day until my family come back_ , she had thought whenever her hope wavered. It was enough to get her through until the next crisis of faith, at which point she’d repeat the mantra and hope would renew once again.

Rey picked out scratches at random. She might have etched that one on her birthday. The one below it could have been done on the anniversary of her parents leaving. Maybe those seven signalled that hellish week where a fever had laid her too low to work. Still, she had crawled out of bed and made her marks. Every line promised an extra swell of pride from her parents once they came back and realized how faithful their daughter had been.

The humid air filled with Rey’s harsh breaths. All those years, all that _hope_ , and for what? She might have walked over her parents’ graves a thousand times without knowing it. The whole damn planet was a graveyard, after all.

Rey sniffed, but the lessons she had learned on Jakku were ingrained into her. Waste tears in the desert, and the desert would give you something to cry about. She channelled her anger into clenching and unclenching her fists.

Combined with the thick air, the ache in her head and heart made it easy to miss the shifting pressure behind her. By the time Rey realized she was not alone, it was too late to try and throw any shields up.

Night after night, she had lain awake on the floor of the _Millennium Falcon_ , surrounded by the snuffles and grunts of sleeping Resistance members. She had scripted what felt like a hundred encounters with the man she kept accidentally thinking of as Ben. In most of the scenarios, she was imperious and silent while he begged for her forgiveness. In several, she punched him squarely in the face.

(In one idle scene, she had punched him and then soothed the blooming red mark on his cheek with a kiss. That train of thought had been forcefully derailed and replaced with increasingly violent situations until Rey felt cleansed of her softness.)

Rey had thought herself prepared for her first meeting with Kylo Ren, but she had not expected it to happen on Jakku. That was a place for old pain, not new. And so she cast aside thoughts of silent glares and even outright antagonism – although Poe and Rose had taught her some _very_ interesting new curse words – and instead shifted her head. She wasn’t looking at him, but the direction of her words was clear.

“You’re not welcome here,” she said in a cold, steady voice. “This is private.”

Kylo was silent for several long moments. Rey turned back to the wall. His presence in the Force was too large to pretend to ignore, and Rey wasn’t sure she had the energy anyway. He was a contradictory beacon of darkness. Far too complicated for such a humble place.

“You’re on Jakku,” he said eventually, his voice low.

It wasn’t a question, and so Rey didn’t deny it. She closed her eyes briefly at the familiar tone of his voice – had he sounded so calm, she wondered, when he ordered his new armies to decimate the base on Crait? – and then drew in a breath.

“The Resistance aren’t here,” she said, matching his evenness. “And I’ll be gone before you even get close.”

That drew a quiet snort. “I’m surprised they let their prized Jedi out of their sight.”

Rey lifted her shoulders in a listless shrug. She had informed General Leia that she needed to take a day or two on a personal mission, and that had been the extent of it. Rey was not an official member of the Resistance, and deferred to Leia out of respect rather than necessity. Still, the older woman had cupped her cheek and nodded her permission. It seemed that being the last Jedi had given Rey some leverage. She wondered if she could use it for extra dessert, once there was food to spare.

“I recognize this place,” Kylo said. He rustled as he took two steps closer to Rey. He must be wearing his cloak, if not his full battle regalia. “I saw it in your memories, back on Starkiller Base.”

Anger spiked through Rey. It was bad enough that Kylo was there in what was supposed to be a quiet moment of acceptance and farewell, but it was a downright insult to remember that he, over everyone else in the galaxy, understood the significance of where she was.

“Those memories weren’t yours to take,” Rey snapped, still facing forwards.

“I know.”

Remorse tinged the words. For a wild moment, Rey thought Kylo might apologize. The silence dragged on until Rey almost laughed at her own naivety. He hadn’t apologized up until then, and it wasn’t as though he hadn’t done far worse things since the interrogation room.

“A mark for every lonely day,” Kylo mused. Although Rey couldn’t see his face, she could picture the perplexity across his features as he surveyed the wall. “Why are you here?”

Rey lowered her gaze. She hoped he would take her silence as a defiant refusal rather than a lack of answers. Curiosity and closure were the two most obvious answers. Masochism was the least kind option, although Rey was certain there was a more than healthy dose of that thrown into her motivations, too.

Kylo took another step closer. His presence hovered like a giant black bird, ready to sweep open his wings and embrace or engulf her. Still, Rey did not turn around. She wasn’t afraid to see his anger, but she couldn’t bear the softness which she thought might still linger. It didn’t make any sense. She had rejected him, and yet in their last connection on Crait he had still looked at her with hurt and hope. He would have been easier to face if he hurled obscenities.

“After I was sent to Skywalker’s care, I wrote letters to my mother.” Kylo’s words faltered, as though they fell brand new from his lips. “Hundreds, over the years. She never once wrote back.”

“When did you stop writing them?” Rey asked. Her throat was dry, and she didn’t quite know why she was asking, but something in Kylo’s somber tone drew her in.

“I wrote the last one the day before I destroyed the temple.”

Rey closed her eyes to trap the tears behind her lids. Even as he was being consumed by darkness, Ben Solo had tried to reach out to his mother. Only abandoned children would cling so fiercely to a lost cause.

Kylo’s fumbling attempt at creating common ground prompted Rey into speaking her own thoughts. It almost didn’t count if only Kylo was around to hear them.

“I would have been such a good daughter.” The words caught in her throat. “I would have done _anything_ for my parents, if they’d just come back for me.” She gulped in a breath of too-hot air. “Why does it hurt so much to miss something I never really had?”

Kylo was silent for a moment. A wave of – remorse? Sorrow? – washed over Rey. Unlike her own sadness, it was jagged at the edges.

“I don’t know,” Kylo said quietly.

The sharp emotions receded back to what Rey guessed were their owner. She didn’t comment on the new, slightly alarming development in their bond. Instead, she sniffed and waited for her eyes to dry.

“It isn’t as though I regret leaving,” she said. “If I hadn’t have found BB-8, I never would have met Finn.” At Kylo’s angry scoff, Rey rolled her eyes. “What did you expect me to say? That I never would’ve met _you_?”

Another step closer. Another strong surge of emotion.

“I would’ve thought I was one of your biggest regrets,” Kylo murmured. Spoken by another, those words in that low tone might have been seductive. From Kylo, they only highlighted a bleak vulnerability that shook Rey to her core.

When it came to Ben Solo, there were a great many things that she regretted. The chance to meet him was not one of them.

“Well,” she said stiffly, “you’re not.”

One final step brought Kylo just inches behind Rey. She held her ground and pretended that the shiver running through her was an adverse reaction to Jakku’s heat. There was no way of knowing that Kylo tilted his head and watched her intently, but Rey felt it nonetheless.

“It doesn’t matter anyway,” he said. “Even if you’d never left, I would have found you. One way or another, the Force would have brought us together. I wouldn’t have left you here alone.”

Just like that, Rey was dragged back to the reason she was there. Her eyes roamed over scratch after scratch after kriffing scratch, and each neat line brought with it another swell of fury. She had been a _child_ , forced to balance precariously on whatever she could stack up just to carve the highest line. She remembered worrying, more than once, what would happen when she ran out of wall space.

 _My parents will have come back by then_ , she had assured herself, and she had never thought to question it.

“I might have stayed here forever,” she said, almost choking on her own rage, “just waiting for them to come back for me. I might have died here. All alone.”

“I would have found you,” Kylo repeated forcefully.

Rey glared up at the wall until the sight blurred with her tears and the marks became one endless smudge. Kylo closed the small gap between them, his stomach flush against her back, and pressed something into Rey’s hand. She wrapped her shaking fingers around the smooth metal hilt of his lightsaber.

“Let the past die,” Kylo said, his eyes still boring into hers even if she did not meet them.

“Kill it,” Rey murmured, more to herself than him, “if you have to.”

The blade thrummed to life, stabbing the air with its blazing, vengeful red. Rey’s grip tightened. Between the dark pull of the saber and Kylo’s unsteady breaths against her neck, Rey thought she might drown in her wrath.

“Do it,” Kylo urged.

Rey gave in.

With an unholy scream, she lunged forward and slashed the lightsaber against the wall. It left a fiery gouge through years’ worth of tallies. She reared back and did it again, then again, each strike deeper and more violent.

How _dare_ her parents trade her off?

How _dare_ they prize a few alcohol-hazed hours over her?

How _dare_ they leave her at Unkar Plutt’s mercy, at Jakku’s mercy, at the mercy of any cruel soul who saw nothing wrong in snatching a child’s hard-earned scrap and portions?

She had _starved_ , she had _suffered_ , and where were they? She was glad they were dead, they deserved it, they deserved so much worse.

She snarled and slashed until there were more flaming sparks than lines.

Breathing heavily, Rey lowered her arm. The wall had been burned beyond recognition. The next scavenger who stumbled upon her wreck of a home would never guess that a child had once spent years patiently etching reminders of her wasted days. A savage joy speared Rey. Good. She was now so much more than that abandoned little girl.

Kylo pressed in close again as Rey deactivated the saber. The air was eerily still in the aftermath of the carnage. Silence rang with the aftermath of Rey’s shouts. Kylo curled one hand around Rey’s own and crushed her fingers between his and his hilt. The other dug into Rey’s hip, pressing her back into him in a way that made Rey’s heart race in something other than fury and adrenaline.

“There’s so much anger inside you. I can feel it.” Kylo’s lips ghosted the shell of her ear. Rey shivered at his approval. Victory and desire emanated from him and settled low in Rey’s stomach. “All that rage, and you still think you won’t one day stand beside me?”

“I won’t,” Rey said, even as she closed her eyes and leaned back into him. The darkness swirling inside of him called out to her own. It promised her understanding and companionship. There was nothing to be feared in their anger as long as they shared its burden together. In return, it would make them strong.

Kylo gave a soft breath of amusement. His fingers tightened around her, binding her to him.

“We’ll see.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Title is from Necropolis by Kamelot, which is a wonderful song :)


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